The Elusiveness of the Truth Can Mean We Assume the Truth
A little white light breaking in among a lot of sensual color. Without light to revere as we do the truth, we might be lost to the sleepy, though somewhat palatable, assuming of the truth.
“The very elusiveness of truth means we assume the truth, at least sometimes, rather than truly write it, and yet the truth will be there, though in a form we didn’t expect. We don’t always have to make that explicit, because the truth will care for itself.”
Getting at the Gist of the Matter
Among other things, this post is an invitation, if not to take up journaling, then at least to have a look inside what amounts to the habit of someone who does it. Journaling is usually less about truth in an abstract sense—though it can be about that, too—than about piecing apart and giving voice to matters inspired from within. I’ve journaled—usually in spiral-bound notebooks, sometimes in book-bound styles, almost always by pen though I’ve used pencil in the past—since I was 17.
I’m 65 now, and I still do it. It’s not navel-gazing; in essence, it’s that piecing apart of material from within in the attempt to get at the truth of what the mind presents. Largely, that’s not cut and dried but the matter of giving voice, a making human of material that without the self as medium…might not be human. Not only ancient writers spoke of their daemon; writers today use the same word, because the motivation that besets them is as elusive yet distinctly intended.
Journal writing is probably not the kind of writing to take to a writer’s group, but reading journals I wrote decades ago is very interesting. It’s not “good writing” in the sense of work that’s been refined through dozens of revisions, but I find my own work is studded with interesting passages well done.
It’s like the photograph, above. A lot of sensual color and a thicket of form: a little light breaks through as if it’s capable of discerning something of what it’s all about. An analogy to what’s broken down in the writing process to get at the gist of the matter.
The Character of Someone Who Journals
Doing it is as natural to me as pouring a cup of coffee. Some who definitely don’t journal not only think it’s strange, they complain about it, while I neither complain of doing it, nor of anyone who doesn’t. It’s not a problem for me as I face advanced age coming not too many years from now, but when I was young, I felt very much aware that I went against the grain of what others thought I was supposed to do. I was supposed to “get with the program.” I kept with the deeper concerns of my mind, when other people believed I was supposed to repress all that and concern myself with what people desired of me. It was a difficult and sustained struggle towards a goal of independence, which I won.
It’s not that I wasn’t independent back then as a young adult, but that I knew the authenticity of my future was at stake.
Someone who begins journaling during the formative years of his adolescence and young adulthood—who really goes at it with a vengeance—is an example of high intelligence stubbornly committed. Committed to passionately inspired material that in all the world has no other place than his notebooks. The central focus of his life isn’t getting ahead financially. He might—like I did—decide that money will take care of itself. His deepest goals aren’t to make money or secure position within the conventional world, but to exercise intelligence in ways that engage him vitally. Lively material, full of drama and form. The inner mind is a cauldron of possibilities yearning to achieve spiritual realization.
I find I have no problem living with others who aren’t like that. The individual I described in the previous paragraph is a rare bird, a man whose intelligence is an unusual engagement with the world. He is the living refutation of that world’s being chiefly the administration of people less intelligent than he is, because his going beyond—and going under—reveals truths that precede convention built on fact. He has little or no need to disparage the conventional world, because it’s part of the truth he’s discovered.
That question of authenticity. It’s too easy to say his is achieved through spiritual realization, rather than honors conferred on him like job titles and salaries. Not only might he hold a good job and make a large income—though to speak for myself, I’m ultimately interested in what goes beyond that—he’s interested in society like everyone else. So a large part of what makes him the particular character he is involves the conventional world.
Truth as Light Hidden and Concealed
What I find so interesting about “The Elusiveness of the Truth Can Mean We Assume the Truth,” is that, at first, I meant it as a critique of my journaling; in fact, the quote is taken from the most recent entry of a journal I keep upstairs. Even as someone who journals, if I’m not careful, I’ll fool myself. Sometimes I do.
In the notebook, I write, “The very elusiveness of truth means we assume the truth, at least sometimes, rather than truly write it, and yet the truth will be there, though in a form we didn’t expect. We don’t always have to make that explicit, because the truth will care for itself.”
And yet, think of the conventional world. How much is assumed, rather than at all encountered as true? A difference exists between fact and truth. Fact can be a form of escape from the truth, because a commitment to facts can be a way of repressing the truth within. I would feel too embarrassed to cite an example, so I’ll let the suggestion be.
Truth is often given an analogy to light, as if it’s as common as a sunny day. As if it has nothing to do with darkness and obscurity. But even as light, it can be concealed, not only as the sun in the photograph above is concealed, but as the sun is concealed at night, such as that the character of darkness, if you will, is part of the story truth tells.
If truth takes care of itself, it does so as if it has a reluctant personality, and indeed, many Christians insist God is a personality. Reluctant as if truth wants to let us make our own difficult choices, rather than revealing everything as obvious. What should be obvious is that we, indeed, come up against difficult choices in a world we find difficult to interpret. It’s not because we lack intelligence! It’s because truth eludes it.
And we should be careful. It’s easy to assume things when the truth is difficult, and though “the truth will be there,” as I say in the quote above, ultimately, each of us chooses his or her own destiny. Especially for every young person, that’s a vitally important and difficult issue.